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Having a more or less functioning brain all of my own that can formulate thoughts, even in verbal form and quite by itself, I do not need to use something like Cortana, or plan to ever do that, so for me it is already way down there.

This also may help to keep the peace at the office (notice the low case ‘o’), I think.

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If Cortana could be refitted to Win8/8.1 & Office 2013 (or even 2016), I might consider it & use Office more often. I mention Win8.1, because the Mail/Calendar/People suite could probably use help from Cortana, too. Sadly, Cortana will only drift over to Office 2019 & Office 365… & both run on Windows 10 whatever. Oh well… my Android phone still has Google Assistant… built-in!

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The original Enterprise computer may have been incredibly large and had an archaic interface, but it had the following advantages over W10: (1) It wasn’t pushy and demanding; (2) It didn’t perform updates whenever it felt like it; (3) It could perform its duties efficiently; (4) it talked but had a priority on listening, not enjoying the sound of its own voice

It had the following major disadvantage: it was horribly unsecure and could easily be hacked, so in that regard it was on par with W10.

Well! I liked Cortana. I had hopes it would continue to grow and develop over the next few years, much like humans, and become an old familiar friend as Windows 10 developed. Busting it down to be an interface to Office is really really sad, just about as sad as demoting a live human being from an office mate to a low down subordinate post, and I hope Microsoft comes to its senses and restores Cortana to her rightful position.

I mean … think about it. In five years or so, do you want to boot up your computer and get things rolling by saying something like “Hi Cortana, how’s it going? Any decent movies out there?” or would you really prefer to boot up with a finger on your microphone and say “Windows 10. Office. Word. Document Johnson Shipping Twenty Two Oh Five Oh Six Paragraph Six”? What turns you on guy? What do you want to do for 12 hours or so?

I haven’t changed my thinking on Cortana. I never used it, and wish it was something I could removed from my PC and have a traditional local search option. I use search engines for web searches as I have always done through a browser. Maybe Cortana will win over Office users? Maybe it won’t.

It’s one of many things I will need to be able to uninstall completely before I consider Windows 10. I know it’s a big part of Microsoft’s desire to monetize me by driving traffic to Bing and providing opportunities for their sponsored links to be inflicted upon me, but oddly enough, that doesn’t appeal to me.

Hmm…so Cortana is moving to Office. This potentially might be helpful for me (an Office 365 user) whenever I can’t figure out how to do something in Office. Yet this would require me to install microphones on all of my home desktop computers. None of my home desktop computers have web cameras or microphones, and for good reason — hackers. I do not plan on adding either microphones or web cameras to any of my home desktop computers.

So Cortana is moving to Office. This potentially is a good home for Cortana, yet I think not. Just imagine Cortana running in law offices and medical offices — both of which are subject to strict laws about client confidentiality and about patient confidentiality. Just imagine Cortana listening to not only the user’s verbal request, but also to any and all other verbal background conversation. The upshot is that such laws require FULL protection of confidential client data. The mere fact that Cortana “could” transmit voice data to a third party (Microsoft) potentially would be, in and of itself, a breach of law. I simply can not believe that Microsoft would be so stupid as to move Cortana to Office, since obviously Microsoft’s legal department was not consulted in this regard.

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